Language Of Confusion: Warning, Etymology Ahead, Part II

All these words are from the Proto Indo European wer-, to cover, which gave us things like warren and warrant, and also things like garnish because words are dumb. And this week is more of the same.
 
Now, like I said, wer- meant to cover. Cover itself showed up in the mid twelfth century, so it’s pretty dang old. It comes from the Old French covrir, and classical Latin coperire, to cover. The co- comes from the prefix com-, though it’s thought to only be intensive here, while the rest is from operire, to close or cover. That’s taken from the Proto Indo European op-wer-yo-, where the op- means over and is the origin of the prefix epi-, and wer- is to cover. To cover over just means to really cover something. And they threw the com- prefix in there to emphasize it even more.
 
Covert is also from cover. It showed up in the fourteenth century from the Old French covert, which is the past participle of covrir. Then there’s discover, also from the fourteenth century. In Old French, it’s descovrir, which is taken from the Medieval Latin discoperire, which you may notice is also just cover with the dis- prefix. Dis- means “the opposite of”, so discovering is the opposite of covering something. I can see that.
 
Then there’s curfew. Really. It showed up in the early fourteenth century meaning the ringing of a bell at a fixed hour, which by the nineteenth century morphed to mean the restriction of movement after a certain time. The word is from the Anglo French coeverfu, from the Old French cuevrefeu, which is from covrir plus the word feu, which means fire—one of the reasons the curfew bell was rung was to warn people to put out their fires before going to sleep. A warning to cover your fire now means curfew.
 
The next word we’ll be looking at—prepare yourselves—is kerchief. Which is a covering, so I guess you can see how it comes from to cover. It showed up in the early thirteenth century where it could be spelled kovrechief, and it meant the same thing as we’d use it as. It’s from the Anglo French courchief, which literally meant “cover head”. The first part is from couvrir, which is from the Old French covrir, while the chief part means head, more literally than we use it these days. Yes, chief once literally meant head, and it’s from the Vulgar Latin capum, head, classical Latin caput, again, head, and the Proto Indo European word for head kaput-, and somehow that’s the origin for kaput, as in dead/broken. And I can’t even make this up, the reason why is because German took a French phrase meaning “to make a bonnet” as a way to say you’re taking all the tricks in a card game, when the French used the phrase in relation to sailing during a storm. I know it’s not related to cover, which we’re looking at, but it might be the stupidest etymology I’ve ever read.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Fordham University